New Video Highlights Research on the In-Situ Assessment of the Seismic Properties of Municipal Solid Waste

A new video released last Friday highlights new research funded by the National Science Foundation that is conducted to study the seismic response of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) landfills.

The video starts by explaining that modern (post ‘90s) MSW landfills in the US have not been subjected to significant earthquake shaking. It then presents a new method to assess the dynamic properties of the Municipal Solid Waste in the field. The method uses large mobile shakers, one of them known as T-Rex, that are available at the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) of the University of Texas. The shakers apply a vertical static and an horizontal dynamic loading on the ground surface and subject the waste to intense shaking. This level of shaking is comparable to the shaking levels expected in future major earthquakes. Sensors are used to capture the behavior of the waste mass. As explained in the video, it is the first time that engineers are able to test waste in such large, but also controlled, shaking in-situ and carefully instrument its behavior.

Tests have been conducted on several landfills including in California and Arizona.

The Research Team consists of:

Prof. Dimitrios Zekkos, University of Michigan (PI)

Dr. Neven Matasovic, Geosyntec Consultants (co-PI)

Prof. Mark Tufenkjian, California State, Los Angeles (co-PI)

Prof. Richard Woods, University of Michigan (Senior Personnel)

Prof. Kenneth Stokoe, University of Texas, Austin (Senior Personnel)

Andhika Sahadewa, Graduate student, University of Michigan

More technical information about this research project can be found on the project’s website on GeoWorld

Information about the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES)

See the embedded video under "Media" below this article for more information.